


Life is unto Life

by Rohirrim_Writer



Category: Frozen (Disney Movies)
Genre: Death, Grief, Mourning, Ritual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 04:06:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28950126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rohirrim_Writer/pseuds/Rohirrim_Writer
Summary: Fanwork about the Game of Thrones x Frozen fanfiction written by RonnieWriting featuring Original Character Bulda created by RonnieWriting and some Oc's of my own. This is an interpretation of their work, not strictly canon. Please go and explore their work you will not regret it! It inspires me everyday!
Kudos: 1





	Life is unto Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RonnieWriting](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RonnieWriting/gifts).
  * Inspired by [A Tide of Ice and Blood (Beta)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23559538) by [RonnieWriting](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RonnieWriting/pseuds/RonnieWriting). 



How does one mourn a child lost to the Wargs? How is a mother to grieve her dead child, when she has nothing to hold in her arms? What will catch her tears if not for their cold skin? So a mother’s cries are lost to the wind, howled like a great beast, a call to the God’s for vengeance. 

Bulda came to them, in these times of grief. She followed their laments to their thresholds, taught them to smear their blood on the door, cut from their bellies. She fed them soup rich with whale’s fat. 

She has dragged mothers back from death’s grip, determined to follow their children into the afterlife. She has blessed their bodies when she failed. 

Some women never were the same, when she left their lodges, taking vows of silence or carrying useless talismans. Most...most she could help. 

There came a knock on her door, before her son entered. He bore the image of his father and she is once again brought low in the face of her great fortune. 

“ **There has been another thieving, Mother. His blood paints the snow to the eatern mountains.** ” He spoke without entering.

“ **It’s Sivnne.** ” He scowled now, as he said it. In time such as these, some turned to anger. “ **It’s Sivnne’s child.** ” 

Bulda gathered her things in silence. Seeds of poppy and polstices of lavender and chamomile. She gathered rock tripe from her stores and thin, woven cloth. 

“ **Take me to Sivnne, my son.** ” They step into the storm together. 

The howl of the wind drowns the sound of sobs from inside, when they come upon her dwelling. The new fall has stolen away any sign of struggle. The God’s are wiping clean their negligence. 

She does not knock, when she enters the cold and desolate home. Loss has stolen even the light from her fire. 

Bulda sets to work setting the kindling alight and building up the fire. Her hands traced the mantle, where a husband has labored to carve scenes of hunts and the scenes of the hunters return. It is yet unfinished, unlike her own. It’s the mantle of a pair yet newly bonded. There is much still to fill. 

This too will be added there, one day. Before the grief has subsided, the tale will be inlaid into their home, part of the it’s lifeblood. 

“ **Sivnne** .” She speaks fist. There is power in a name, to call upon, to imbue. 

The woman does not rise. She sits upon the tanned leather of a deer, staring into the fire, caught under its spell. 

“ **Sivnne, my dear.** ” She does not touch her. She knows better. They must first drive the spirits that cling to her clothes away. 

“ **Rise** .” She commands. The woman must do it on her own and Bulda aches to see her do so. She has been a Gotthi for more seasons than this girl has been alive and she still must grit her teeth against the pull to bear her anguish for her. 

Sivnne does so, somehow, like a spirit herself. She moves like she is in thick snow, like she is somewhere different altogether than in this small room Bulda occupies. 

“ **Derobe, down to your skin...like a child, my dear.** ” She must be as a babe, brought into this world, so that her clothes may be hung by the fire. 

Sivnne’s tears have begun once again, falling silently as she stares into the fire. In time, Bulda will collect them and she will bathe in them. 

“ **Hang them by the fire.** ” The room becomes darker as she does so, blocking out the flames that lie behind. 

“ **You must leave them there for three days** .” It took three moons for the sorrow to be driven out. “ **You must not wear any clothes or fur until sunrise on the fourth day or darkness will enter the weave and slip into your soul.** ” 

She stands, naked and shivering, in the flickering light. Bulda came forward to collect her tears in a small wooden bowl, no bigger than a spiny, seed pod of a pine. The tears of countless generations have rested there. She will draw strength from their spirits. 

Bulda set to work drawing a bath while Sivnne bowed her head to catch her tears. She is pliant in her grief, the most dangerous kind. 

The bath is cold, but such is necessary to wake the mind. Cold was like belladonna, poppy, and lithium salts. It could heal, when used sparingly, and kill if mishandled. 

“ **Sivnne, come to the bath, my dear.** ” She steps to the basin, but did not enter. She look up from her pool of tears to entreat her. 

“ **I cannot. Gotthi. I cannot bear this.** ” Her body is wracked with it. 

“ **You will, child. And you will rise again. Do not forget what you are named for.** ” Sivnne for  _ new victory.  _

“ **There is no victory in death.** ” She spoke with the surety of one so young. 

“ **No, but there is victory in** **_life_ ** **, Sivnne** _. _ ” Her expression turns toward one of anger, but it dies, with nothing to feed. Anger will starve on the truth. 

“ **Cleanse yourself, that you might honor the boon that you bore a child. Honor the scars that his life gave you** .” The young mother nods and steps into the basin. 

She cries out when she touches the scarcely melted snow. She does not stop her ritual, even as her cries become great wracked sobs, and her body becomes half-submerged. Into the water Bulda pours the tears, dipping the bowl into the water and draining it several times so that every drop might be released. 

The Mother of fire and mercy would cleanse her clothes and the walls of her home. The Ghost of the mountain and the ancestors would bathe her in the frigid waters. The rock would satisfy The Son. The Father would demand her blood. 

Bulda reaches to wash her skin, taking care to trace each stretch mark on her skin with a cloth and wood ash soap. The cloth will be burnt. 

Bulda washes her hair and when she shivers too violently from the cold Bulda draws her from the opaque water into her arms. She dried by the fire and drank a tea of lichen and poppy. 

“ **I think I will live forever thinking my son will come to my arms if I call.** ” Sivnne finally speaks again. 

“ **So he will. Life is unto life. He will be reborn as the snow that falls and the stonecrop and the lemming. You will know him in the call of the ptarmigan.** ” Bulda felt her heart beat outside of herself every time she saw a great stag or a lonely gyrfalcon. 

“ **But I wish to know him as my son.** ” Sivnne has no other children to see the face of her lost one in, as Bulda sees the face of her husband in her children. 

“ **You do, Sivnne. You do.** ” Bulda would die with the image of her husband waiting behind closed lids. So too would Sivnne’s child be with her. 

“ **Now come, we must satisfy the Gods** .” Bulda urges, before her grief becomes too great and the purification is left unfinished.

“ **Why should I satisfy them when they forsake me?** ” 

“ **Do not mistake veneration for subjugation.** ” These traditions had been born with the earth itself. “ **This is how we mourn your son. The Gods will bear his name now. We appeal to them and they champion us. They will make his death bear fruit.** ”

She knew there was no comfort for her now, only in time would the wounds heal. 

“ **Come now, let us weep for him.** ” 

Sivnne stands and makes for the door, from which her child had been stolen. She opens it to the bitter cold and stands, naked, before their kinfolk. She steps out into the snow, feet sinking into the drifts, but she shows no signs of feeling it. 

Bulda follows to hand her the knife, made from the antlers of a juvenile caribou, shed in its first season. She knows what to do, has stood on the other side of the scene, watched as others pressed the blade to their skin until it wept scarlet. It is the place all mothers were once tied to their mothers and so too was she tied to her son. 

With the blood of her womb she paints the door, not a ward against Wargs-for there was no such thing, but a ward against perhaps greater evils that lie waiting. Bulda chants the words, and when she is midway through, so does the village. 

“ **By the blood of your body and sweat of your brow**

**Bore you a child into this world**

**By your blood and salt will you mourn**

**Till you return to sea and the sky and mountain**

**From whence you were wrought**

**For so are we rock returned to soil**

**Ash to soil**

**Soil to tree**

**Tree to ash**

**So take the departed to the soil**

**Let not grief tie death to our door**

**But bring it upon our enemies.** ”

There on the door, written in blood, is the name of her son, in runes until the wind and water and passage of time took that too. 

  
  



End file.
